Video of Moscow Parking Brawl Goes Viral

Creatas/Thinkstock(MOSCOW) -- Video of an expletive-laden brawl over illegal parking in central Moscow went viral on YouTube where it has been viewed over two million times since it was posted on Tuesday.

The video shows members of a pro-Kremlin youth group and a group of young men, which reportedly include the son of a Chechen politician, exchanging heated words and punches.

Members of the youth group known as Nashi are seen asking a woman to move her car into a nearby mall parking lot, which is empty and would cost her less than two dollars. The woman refused to move it in “principle,” saying they don’t know who they are messing with and then threatened to rip off the limbs of the man filming the scene if he doesn’t delete the video.

“You’re going to crawl around on two hands,” she growled.

She then called for backup and the video cuts to the tire-screeching arrival of a Porsche Cayenne SUV and several other vehicles. A group of young men jump out and the video cuts to a tense argument. Punches are thrown as the scene quickly devolves into a giant brawl outside of a popular mall not far from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russian news reports identified the woman as the wife of a Chechen member of the Russian parliament and one of the men who arrived to back her up was identified as her son.

Neither side decided to file charges, but Moscow police have opened an investigation anyway as the video gains notoriety online.

Nashi is most famous for defending Vladimir Putin at opposition rallies and has been known to intimidate opposition leaders. For the past year the group’s StopHAM movement has gone on a crusade against Moscow’s notoriously shameless parkers who often double and triple park their cars and block traffic.

They confront the drivers and, if they refuse to move, slap a giant sticker on the windshield that says “I don’t care! I park wherever I want!” That usually results in a confrontation full of foul language and some shoving. The group then posts edited videos of the exchanges online. In one video posted last year, the group placed a sticker on a luxurious Bentley sedan, valued at over $150,000, because the driver refused to move.